The fundamental steps of processing color photographic light-sensitive materials generally include a color development step and a desilvering step. In the color development step, exposed silver halide is reduced with a color development agent to form silver and the oxidized color developing agent reacts with a color former (coupler) to yield a dye image. In the subsequent desilvering step, the silver thus formed is oxidized with a bleaching bath, further changed into a soluble silver complex by the function of a fixing agent, and then dissolved away.
In addition to these fundamental steps of color development processing described above, actual development processing involves various auxiliary steps for maintaining the photographic and physical quality of the resulting image and for improving the preservability of the image. For example, there are illustrated a hardening bath, a stopping bath, an image stabilizing bath, a water washing bath, etc.
In recent years, it has been strongly desired to accelerate the processing, that is, to shorten the processing time. With the above-described color development processing, there is a strong need to shorten the time for the desilvering step, which typically occupies nearly one half of the total processing time.
In response to such a need for reducing the time for the desilvering step, there have been known a bleach-fixing solution, which contains an aminopolycarboxylic acid ferric ion complex salt and a thiosulfate in a single solution, as described in German Pat. No. 866,605. However, the bleaching power of the solution is remarkably decreased, since an aminopolycarboxylic acid ferric ion complex salt, which per se is weak in oxidizing power (bleaching power), and a thiosulfate, which has a reducing power, are coexistent in a single solution. Therefore, it is very difficult for such bleach-fixing solution to sufficiently achieve desilveration of color photographic materials for photography of high sensitivity and high silver content, and consequently it can not be employed for practical use.
On the other hand, for the purpose of increasing the bleaching power, there has been proposed a method wherein various bleach accelerators such as mercapto compounds, for example, those described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,858, etc. are added to the bleaching bath, the bleach-fixing bath or a prebath thereof. However, effects of these bleach accelerators are not necessarily sufficient when they are employed in a conventional processing method including a bleaching bath and a fixing bath.
Further, an attempt to accelerate desilveration has been made by the method wherein a color photographic material is processed, after color development, with a bleaching bath and subsequently with a bleach-fixing bath, as described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 7352/86 and 7353/86.
However, it has been found that another problem occurs, in which desilveration is rather deteriorated depending on the kind of DIR (development inhibitor releasing) couplers included in color photographic materials, when they are subjected to processing with a bleaching bath and subsequently with a bleach-fixing bath.